Los Angeles is one of the last major cities in the country to provide its public school students with musical instruments for free. But the woodwinds, brass, and strings are bound to break sometimes. Thankfully, at a warehouse in Downtown LA, skilled craftspeople have been fixing those guitars, saxophones, and more for the last six decades. Their stories are the focus of an Oscar-nominated short documentary from the Los Angeles Times, directed by Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot.
Bowers has composed music for major movies like King Richard and the newest adaptation of The Color Purple, but he started as an LAUSD student. He started his musical journey with the piano at 4 years old, graduating to the saxophone in middle school for a short period of time.
Bowers first learned about the repair shop from his co-director, and it made him reflect on his own experience in the district. He might not have stuck with the brass instrument.
“I had never heard of it. And I also never even thought about how those instruments were kept in tune and kept in good repair. And that saxophone that I had, I remember moments of it needing to be repaired. And I just assumed it was being sent to the manufacturer or to some huge factory somewhere. And I had no idea that it was just going downtown, and that there was only a handful of people responsible for making sure that all of those instruments were always in working order.”
Just 12 technicians are responsible for the upkeep of 130,000 instruments in LAUSD right now, Bowers points out. When he first visited the repair shop, he was struck by their dedication to the craft.
“For them, this is so, so important. It's not just a job. There's this love … because of the familial nature between all of the craftspeople. But also, each of them takes it so seriously, and feels like it's such an honor to be making sure that these instruments are working for students.”
One technician is Dana Atkinson, a gay man who came out in his late 20s during the mid-1970s. He says in the film, “My mom taught me music is like swimming. The rhythm, it’s constantly in the moment. And if you stop, there’s no music. So it’s not easy being a kid, but we try to make at least the playing of the instrument part as good as it can be.”
Another technician, Steve Bagmanyan is Armenian and grew up in Soviet Azerbaijan, then fled when war broke out in the late 1980s.
The craftspeople in the film all experienced hardships in their lives, and music kept them afloat.
“It's really looking at how each of these people, at some point in their lives, they were broken, and in a sense, repaired by music,” Bowers says. “And so they really have that understanding that it's so valuable for kids to have access to something that can bring so much joy to their lives.”
One student plays the violin, and her family struggles with a lot of illnesses. She says in the film, “Everybody's always getting sick back to back. Like, ‘Oh, we have to go to the hospital for them’ and stuff. Like, ‘Wait, I'll hear you play in a minute. I just have to get these medicine for them.’ If I didn't have my violin from school … I don't know what I would do. Don't even jinx me with that.”
Her mother died shortly after the documentary was filmed.
“She was moving through so much with her family, and in a lot of ways, the violin has become a best friend or a confidant or this partner that she can go to when she's dealing with all those things. And yes, it just was really beautiful for her to be so comfortable with sharing that with us.”
The documentary also focuses on the financial barrier to buying or renting the instruments. LAUSD student Manuel Carmona says in the film, “If you told me five years that I’d be playing sousaphone, I’d be like, ‘Damn. I think you’re lying to me, bro. ‘Cause that’s not it. I don’t know how to play anything.’ Cause I could never have at that age an instrument that expensive. I used to beg my mom and my dad, I used to beg ‘em to buy me one. And they were always telling me the same thing: ‘Me decían, ‘o la tuba o tú,’ which means, ‘Either a tuba or you in the house.’”
Throughout the course of the film, warehouse technicians had the opportunity to meet with LAUSD alumni, as well as current student musicians.
“There are generations of people that had these technicians to thank,” Bowers says. “And then we also did a tour where we played the film … at four major high schools around the city, and had thousands of students that they were able to meet and receive, in some cases, a standing ovation from. And so it just validates this noble effort that they've been putting in for years, that it was all worth it, that it was touching someone.”
While it isn’t possible to know which students become professional musicians, Bowers says LAUSD’s work is a testament to the power of investment in arts and music education.
“There are people that talk about how they became a better listener when it comes to having difficult conversations with people — because they were able to listen when playing in an orchestra and recognize the importance of being in tune with the person next to you.”
He continues, “There's so many things that can come from learning music at a young age that go far beyond being a musician.”